1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to a printer control device and method to control printers in a network to which multiple printers are connected, and a computer program product to perform this control, and more particularly, to a printer control device and method by which, where printing is continued using a substitute printer to substitute for a printer that has failed, the same image quality, including such aspects as color characteristics and gradation characteristics, is ensured in the output from both printers.
2. Description of the Related Art
Printer systems in which multiple printers are connected to each other by means of a network circuit are conventionally available. Using such a printing system, one of the multiple printers is selected so that printing will be executed using this selected printer. In addition, when a problem has occurs in the printer that is performing printing in the printing system, the images that are not printed by the failed printer are output by another printer (see Japanese Laid-Open patent Application No. Hei 10-11242).
There are differences in the output characteristics of the multiple printers, however, because they are made by different manufacturers, or due to aging. Consequently, in the case of color images, the color characteristics of the images printed by the first selected printer before the failure occurred does not match the color characteristics of the images printed by a substitute printer after the failure occurred, resulting in the problem that the color characteristics of the printed images are different.
In the case of monochrome images, the gradation characteristics of the images printed using the selected printer and the gradation characteristics of the images printed using a substitute printer are different, resulting in the problem that there is a difference in darkness between the two sets of printed images.